


His Descent was like Nightfall

by supercalifragili



Series: Healings [4]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Analogy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-05 14:14:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3123170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supercalifragili/pseuds/supercalifragili
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Liam doesn’t wait for the falling though, he goes and saves him as soon as he sees the wobbly frame of his walking and the tiredness in his golden brown eyes. Zayn’s eyes are like streets of gold and fountains of chocolate, a sparkle of willow green and a comforting yellow of a ranculus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	His Descent was like Nightfall

**Author's Note:**

> This is Liam's version of [About a Line](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2296700). I think this is set when One Direction was still touring in North America.

_“There is nothing alive more agonized than man / of all that breathe and crawl across the earth.”_

_“His descent was like nightfall.”_

_“…There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover’s whisper, irresistible—magic to make the sanest man go mad.”_

_― Homer, The Iliad_

Liam doesn’t mean to read and write down those green highlighted quotes.

Zayn brings at least twelve books when tour starts and he can’t go to the library back home. He has comics too, but books let him wander with his mind. Now he’s reading classics, he’s reading about battles and love and dignity, about kudos and ethos, the importance of one and the pleasure of the other. Liam knows about the _Iliad_ thanks to Zayn. There’s a way he reads, scribbles, circles and underlines Homer, there’s a way he stays on one page and the pads of his fingers rub the fore edges of the leaf in a systematic cadence.

 _Iliad_ ’s verses scrape Zayn’s heart with sharp nails and blunt knives, before he can close the book, tears glass his eyes. Liam wipes off the dampness left by the tears when they’re under the covers of their bed. He silences the nostalgia and sadness of his sobs with his mouth and lets them turn into love and desire. He can’t ever get enough of Zayn’s fingers clutching his shoulders tightly when he swallows him down and his throat constricts around Zayn’s cockhead, he doesn’t stop and Zayn’s voice hazes in his ears of all sorts of sounds. Zayn is music and echoes, he is the quiet flow of a polished black piano and the thunderous feel of an old cello. Zayn vibrates of colours and music, the loudness in his head and the firm grips seeming like whirlwinds.

Liam doesn’t mull over things when they are about Zayn- he doesn’t need to. Zayn is pages he can skim through leisurely- he still doesn’t. There’s something particular in the way Zayn carries himself and the way he says things; there’s meaning and depth, sarcasm and sincerity, there’s the flipped side of the coin to consider. Zayn, in the scale of novels he once skimmed through in the library of his way-passed school years, is a sealed book, a padlock securely attached to it and a key Liam searched for during sleepless nights. Zayn is a book with a myriad of bookmarks, one with words underlined that pour inside rivers of blood streaming in his body.

Thing is, when Zayn’s wings become wax in the blinding sun that are the flashes of cameras and the screams of fans outside their hotel, _Iliad_ is the book Zayn picks up from the improvised shelf he creates in the time frame of days they spend at whichever location they are set to sing in. But Liam thinks there’s a tragic theme in the fall of Icarus and his soar towards the sun. Liam thinks Zayn is Icarus in some unfamiliar way (Zayn is daring, but not that much) and he notices the way he shelters himself in the labyrinths of Knossos created for the Minotaur and the Cretan bull that charge onto him when his heart displays way too much on his face.

When Zayn steps near the windows to look down and breathe, Liam sees him giving away too much of what he is, he pictures Zayn’s wings melting steadily under the rays of brightness. He doesn’t see Zayn look back at the labyrinth and return to it. Zayn lives in a complex and spiral one-way maze. There are secrets and do nots, can nots and must nots that sometimes mix together that make Zayn stumble and nearly collapse.

Liam doesn’t wait for the falling though, he goes and _saves_ Zayn as soon as he sees the wobbly frame of his walking and the tiredness in his golden brown eyes. Zayn’s eyes are like streets of gold and fountains of chocolate, a sparkle of willow green and a comforting yellow of a _ranculus_.

Zayn confessed in a hushed and coy voice ‘You’re the good side of the labyrinth’ and Liam smiled without knowing the deep meaning to that. Liam never knew what to think of it until Zayn told him about Daedalus and pulled him through the ways of the vast Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg in a chilly afternoon during one of their free days from the shows and stretching his hand towards the _Daedalus and Icarus, c. 1645_ , by Charles Le Brun. Liam will always remember the heat in his hands as Zayn pulled him in the private plane back to Toronto and the way Zayn’s hands held him by his nape as he sunk down on Liam’s cock, breath coming short and the moan pressed on his birthmark.

Liam kisses him lots some nights, he pecks his mouth and his thumb brushes against his bottom lip for opening, feeling the chapped and soft that sometimes Zayn becomes. He pushes his tongue in and swipes deliberately at Zayn’s one, the palm of his hands feeling the shudders that gush Zayn’s body. When Zayn can’t breathe anymore and gasps for air as their foreheads press against each other, Liam watches his dark hair flopping softly down on his eyes, those long eyelashes that when are damp cast a perfect shadow on his cheeks.

Zayn is beautiful, he knows that, but Zayn sometimes doesn’t think he’s beautiful _within_ so Liam reminds him by undressing him of his clothes and inhibitions, tasting his olive skin and the scent that his body carries; he tells him he is indeed beautiful when Zayn can’t even open his eyes, too tired and boneless. He means to take it slow with him, he means for their time to seem endless. Zayn writhes gorgeously on the light sheets, sweat glistening on his skin as he works him open, fingers sliding in and out steadily, brushing tenderly that bundle of nerves that has Zayn gasping until he grunts and with a sinful glare whispers ‘Liam, if you don’t fuck me now-’.

Liam likes him like this, when Zayn gives himself to him, makes him responsible for his body, when Zayn’s chest is covered in come and there’s a blissful smile playing on his bruised lips. Liam feels he can do everything.

Zayn is peaceful then. In the morning when Liam wakes up and he finds him drawing ardently in his sketchbook with a cup of hot tea on the coffee table, Liam leans against the doorframe of their fleeting living room and smiles like he’s won a thousand battles with Achilles by his side.

**Author's Note:**

> There are reasons why Minotaur and the Cretan bull are there, mostly analogy. If you have a hard time understanding the connection, Minotaur is a representation of fans (there’s a duality in that) and the Cretan bull is the media. I don’t know why Iliad and Icarus and Daedalus worked with this (I know, I’m just terrible at explaining, just know that Iliad is my favourite book ever and the ‘legend’ of Icarus and Daedalus fascinates me to no end). There are things that miss (somehow) and probably they miss and I can’t recollect them because I was writing during chemistry class and stoichiometry is pretty intriguing haha, I’m rambling now, wow. But if you have any question, please feel free to ask. I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reading!


End file.
